


The reticence of memories

by giallarhorn



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-20
Updated: 2014-04-20
Packaged: 2018-01-20 04:36:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1496872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giallarhorn/pseuds/giallarhorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Truth of the matter is, Amy doesn’t forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The reticence of memories

**Author's Note:**

> I started this several years ago, and finally got around to finishing it just now. It always interested me to think about what the impact would be if Amy couldn't forget anything and if she was literally a lifeboat for the rest of the universe, particularly in relation to her previous/parallel life.
> 
> Technically, it's Amy/Rory, but it's given in tiny pieces and is more focused on Amy.

            Truth of the matter is, Amy doesn’t forget.

            It’s not that she doesn’t want to forget, because some of the things she remembers ( _silent angels with stone tears, machine men with machine hearts, jagged mouths forming blazing white gnawing and hungry and fanged monsters hiding in her house just out of the corner of her eye and so many other terrible and awful things lurking_ ) she wishes she could forget.

            But she can’t, because Amy can’t forget anything as long as she draws breath.

 

           

 

            The first time Amy dreams of another life is the night of her wedding, lying in bed with Rory as the TARDIS spins to some destination that the Doctor had in mind. A hotel in space, he told her, a suitable place for a honeymoon.

            It isn’t like a normal dream. She isn’t sure what gives it away- maybe the way she feels the grains of sand beneath her, the suns bearing down on her or the deafening cheer of the crowd. There’s something sticky running down her face ( _sap, from the cut on her brow already closing- she does not bleed like humans_ ) and she clenches her fists. Needlepoints prick across her skin where the needles near her palms haven’t been pruned. Her opponent hefts his sword- a show of bravado, since she has no internal organs and close combat is risky against her kind.

            She roars out a challenge, and closes the gap between them.

            The crowd cheers and the thirsty sand laps down blood and sap beneath twin suns on a world that she’s never been to.

 

 

 

            After the fifth night, she asks the Doctor if there’s a catalog of alien species from the universe on the TARDIS. It turns out there is- a partial catalog, at least, but she hopes that it’ll have what she wants.

            It takes them much longer to find it- the library seems to have moved floors, and the book itself is misplaced in _Limericks_ rather than _Catalogs, F-G_.

            Realization dawns on Amy when she finds out that there are worlds with cactus people, giant telepathic coral and women with scarab heads- these aren’t just dreams. Normal dreams don’t involve worlds or places that she’s never been to that exist, and dreams most certainly don’t feel like these do.

 

 

            The first man Amy kills isn’t human. Is that right? She’s not even sure if the Sensorites have genders, if they’re female or male or would it be more proper to call them _its_. They all look the same, gray skin and large black eyes and whiskers.

            Major Darius Becker, Sixth Bridge Company of the Empire of Earth, didn’t mean to kill hi- _it_. This was meant to be a standard evaluation mission to appraise the resources of the planet. He wasn’t even proper military- he was a civilian biologist. After landing, some of the company had been beset by the indigenous life ( _giant spiders that couldn’t stand light, tall as a man_ ) and when he had been examining the corpse, it came at him from behind screaming in something like rage.

            Major Becker didn’t mean to grab the sonic knife in a panic.

            When she wakes up she’s sobbing for air. She’s never killed anyone before, not on purpose or accident or with deliberation.

            Amy knows that it’s a dream, just a dream and that she isn’t the one ( _Major Darius Becker, Sixth Company of the Empire of Earth- it feels like a mantra_ ) who held the knife or plunged it in. But she remembers with such clarity the way that the warm blood thickens on her skin and the sound of its last breath and the knife falling.

            She remembers the way the thing stares at her with its eyes and its grey limbs and doesn’t move.

 

 

            Those are not the worst ones.

            The worst are the ones she can’t tell apart from reality.

            Those are the ones that she knows, somewhere deep inside of herself, are from her own life. A life that she never lived in this universe and shouldn’t even remember.

 

 

 

            Amy doesn’t tell Rory about the dreams. Not yet, at least. It’s not that she doesn’t want to tell him because she wants someone to know and have someone tell her that she isn’t losing her mind and Rory would do that. Rory would also worry and fret and Amy’s not sure he’d know how to convince her that it’s alright.

            She’ll tell him. Not right now, but eventually.

            So Amy resolves to tell the Doctor.

 

 

 

            One night in the TARDIS, when Rory is asleep Amy slips out of their room to look for the Doctor. She finds him in the console room, watching something move on the display and fiddling with a knob on the console. “Do you ever sleep, Doctor?”

            He startles at her voice. “Amy! Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

            “I could say the same for you.” Amy grimaces- he’s right on that point and she’ll probably regret staying up this late. She just didn’t want to bother Rory with it until she had a better idea of what was going on.

            “Yes, but I’m not human so I don’t need to sleep nearly as much as you lot. Time Lord physiology, you know. Stay up all night and day if we need to, then make it up later.” He cocks his head and seems to notice her expression. “What’s on your mind, Pond?”

            “It’s just,” Amy hesitates. She doesn’t know why, since she went looking for him to see if he had answers. “Doctor, I remember stuff.”

            “Of course you remember stuff. Everyone remembers stuff- loads of stuff. Remembering is great, mostly. Though not nearly all of the time. Big bother sometimes, memory.”

            “I don’t mean like normal stuff, Doctor.” She sits down on the stairs and tries to focus on the feeling of the cool metal through the cloth of her gown. _Steady, Amy. Steady_. “I mean, I remember growing up with my parents, yeah? Growing up with them there and around and never really meeting you till my wedding since you never crashed into my backyard. But I also remember growing up when my parents disappeared and being raised by Aunt Sharon and you crashed into the shed in my backyard.

            “And I know things that I definitely shouldn’t know. I’m dreaming about being different people in places I’ve never even heard of and different _species_ and living their lives knowing things I haven’t got any right to know. I know things that I didn’t know even could exist but do exist and I know that I’m not just making this stuff up in my head because I’ve checked, these things are real. These don’t feel like just dreams- they feel _real_ , like they’ve actually happened to these people, like they’re memories. But Doctor, how is it that I’m dreaming of this stuff?”

            He doesn’t say anything for a long time. Amy’s starting to worry that he’s thinking of a lie to tell her when he sighs, “Amy Pond.”

            “Name from a fairy tale, you once told me.”

“I did. Do you remember the first time we met and you told me about the thing that scared you?”

            “The crack in my bedroom wall.” It’s strange- she remembers the night when the Doctor crashed into her shed and giving him fish fingers and custard, but she also remembers never meeting him and her mother tucking her into bed. “What about it?”

            “That crack in your wall, Amy. It- I’ve told you before, that crack wasn’t just a one way door; it wasn’t nearly that simple. It wasn’t just something that eats up and swallows up everything around it- other stuff came out of it.” He furrows his brow as he looks at her. “Quite a lot of things, actually.”

“What sort of things, exactly?”

            “Well, Prisoner Zero for starters.” Amy suppresses a shudder. She’d like to forget that there had been a _thing_ living alongside her without her ever knowing for half her life. “But other stuff, stuff you and I can’t really see. You’re special, Amy. Those cracks were special. They weren’t just two pieces of space and time meeting in a place they shouldn’t have ever met. It was the TARDIS exploding at every single moment in history and those cracks were the universe bursting at the seams as all of time and space flooded out. Things falling into them and vanishing were just a side effect of the uncontrolled temporal energies.”

            “So, what exactly does this have to do with my crazy dreams?” she says.

            “Well, it wasn’t a one way stream. The universe was cracking because it was trying to be everywhere at every time all at once, which isn’t something that can ever happen. The whole universe was eating itself up by leaking away into those cracks, but it was also pouring out into your mind for all those years. Normal people, even time travelers or Time Lords,” he motions to himself and to the TARDIS, “we wouldn’t have been around it long enough for it to have any real effect. But Amy, you grew up with that crack all of your life.

            “Amy, your memories, even if you don’t know or remember them, are a blueprint for the universe as it used to be before it ended. When you brought me back on your wedding day, it wasn’t just me. You brought back _everyone_ else, Amy, because stored somewhere in your mind is the memory of the universe as it was before the cracks. Everyone and everything that had ever lived, died or exist- you gave the entirety of history meaning because you remembered them, even if you didn’t know it.”

            “So,” Amy closes her eyes and tries to process the enormity of what he just told her. It’s not every day that she’s told that she has the entire universe in her head. “I’m kind of like a lifeboat for the universe?”

            “Well, more like a bathtub with a boat inside. You’re the ship, the universe is the water and your dreams are residual bleedthrough- the waves splashing the ship.”

            “Gotcha.”

            She’s not sure if it makes it any easier.

 

 

 

            Lives that are definitively not hers ( _what a wonderful day to set sail on a sea of mercury beneath the five colored suns_ ) that have nothing to do with quiet Leadworth or a blue police box are the easiest ones. Those may not always be the good ones, but they’re the ones where she’s able to tell herself that it isn’t real, that it isn’t her life.

           

 

 

            A recurring dream- dying over two thousand years, trapped inside of a box.

 

           

                                   

            This isn’t the first time she’s been shot at- traveling with the Doctor does come with dangers, of course. Before the Doctor, she’s never been shot at.

            This is the first time, however, that she’s been _shot_.  And it _hurts_.

            Some distant part of her thinks that it’s odd that such a single tiny ( _is it tiny? she would’ve guessed that it’s tiny wound but the_ pain-) shot to hurt so much. Her insides feel like they’re on fire, her lungs rattle to breathe and Rory is pressing his hand to the wound so hard that she almost can’t feel it.

            Her legs scramble against the dirt and she clutches at Rory with a bloody hand as he screams out her name. She tries to tell him to find the Doctor, but all she manages is his name as her body spasms in pain.  

            It hurts. A lot.

            She never would’ve thought that of all the places that she’d die, it wouldn’t be on an alien planet with a name she couldn’t pronounce. She didn’t think she’d die here on Earth within stone’s toss of Stonehenge, shot by her fiancé.

            Amy doesn’t want to die.

 

 

 

            Dying doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t really feel like anything. _Being alive_ , that’d hurt.

            Dying sort of just _is_ , really- it’s a word describing an action or process or an in between state of _living_ and _dead_. There isn’t too much thought or feeling to it.

           

            It’s like how falling asleep feels- never entirely too aware of that invisible moment between being awake and asleep. A point in time where she could cease to be.

            A query- if she’s dying, then is she dead?

            She remembers Rory cradling her in his arms ( _Rory’s also dead and she left him dying till her memories and grief were swallowed up_ ) and when they hoisted her into the box to take the chair meant for the Doctor.

            Yet, she's able to think and if Socrates ( _or is it Aristotle? History wasn't her best subject_ ) is right, then she is. The thing with the dead is that they don't remember or think and only be- be dead. She can do all of those things, so must not be dead.

            Or is she dead and dreaming of being alive? Do the dead dream? 

            She searches for her senses. Does she have those? The dead can’t feel, and neither can she. She can’t see or hear or taste or speak, which are all things that the dead can’t do.

            In a moment of blind panic, she thinks that she’s truly dead when something inside of doesn’t work- her lungs won’t draw breath, she can’t move her mouth and her fingers won’t flex. She’s scared but then but then she feels her a point of pressure on her hand.

            It’s as if that’s all she has and it’s the first time that she has a hand, so she clings to it and for a time ( _seconds? Years? Centuries?_ ) all Amy has is that hand.

            Over time, she becomes more aware of how her senses leave her as she struggles to hold on to them- touch is all that she left. Wherever here is, it is lightless and soundless so she can’t be sure if she had them to start with.

            So Amy waits in the darkness of the box- it’s isolation and restriction and imprisonment all at once and she knows that if the box opens before the appointed time, the thread anchoring her to the physical world, to the state of dying rather than _dead_ and _not dead_ will snap and she will be dead.

            The knowledge doesn’t comfort her.

            Waiting in the dark isn’t comfortable. It isn’t pleasant.

            She wonders more than once if she’ll go insane. Would insanity be better than this? Days and months and centuries are all the same to her now, so would it make the passage of time easier?

            It dawns on her later that the box won’t let her go insane. Nor will it let her die- it’ll keep her just as she was when she was put inside of the box.

            Knowing that, her worst fear as she sits in the darkness isn’t death. Not anymore. Death might be preferable to this third state of existence.

            It’s the fear that she’s been forgotten.

 

 

 

            Amy remembers that the Doctor telling Rory that it’d only feel like a moment passed when he had put her in. 

            Of course she should’ve known that he was lying. He always lied.

            It isn’t a moment or a second or an hour.

            It’s two thousand years that she lays awake.

 

 

 

            The wood feels smooth as she hefts the shovel. It wasn’t the ideal way to do things, but she’d take what she could.

            “Where’re you going?” Rory asks through a mouthful of toast. Amy glances at him sitting at their dining table- he’s still in his scrubs and smells faintly of antiseptic soap.

            “Out,” she doesn’t know what to tell Rory. It’s hard enough already for her and this isn’t exactly something that he can help with. “For a walk.”

            Sleep deprived and worn from a late night call, he’s still skeptical. “You need a shovel for a walk?”

            “Yep.” She kisses him on the check, and flashes a smile she doesn’t mean. “Don’t worry about it.”

            “Amy,” he starts to say something- probably to ask what’s wrong, but he stops and shakes his head. “Take your time.”

            “Thanks.” She doesn’t know if he’d understand what she’s going to do, but she knows that Rory knows the weight of memories. This would be easier to do without him there, however.

            Amy wasn’t lying when she said that she was going on a walk- she doesn’t know where she’s headed, other than finding somewhere secluded and away from beaten and treaded paths.

            It doesn’t take too long to find a place in the small copse of trees behind their house. Alone, Amy plants the shovel into the earth and begins to dig.

            She isn’t sure when it is that she begins to cry.

            Amy knows that she shouldn’t be crying, not over this. She should be crying over a million different other things ( _all of them burning in her mind with such detail that she wishes she could forget- every atrocity and death and tragedy_ ) that dwarf this in every respect, make this seem silly, almost trivial. Especially not when she’s here and alive and the grave that she digs is for a man who is still in her house eating toast.

            Amy wipes the tears from her eyes and looks down at the shallow pit she’s dug. She didn’t bring anything to put in there, and the emptiness glares back at her in accusation. It’s symbolic, she supposes. A gesture of sorts, since she can’t bury someone when there’s no body.

            That Rory’s dead, and she doesn’t know how to mourn for someone who’s never lived or existed.

 

 

 

            She becomes better at knowing which ones are dreams or memories.

            Amy hasn’t dreamed in a very, very long time.

 

 

 

 

 

            Nighttime and Amy walks about the TARDIS because she can’t sleep again, because there’s too many things on her mind.

            Then the corridor she’s in is filled with trees that are stark and gray and the air is clear in her lungs and she knows this place so well, that old shack that had been torn down and rebuilt ( _two skips, a dimension and a turn left, nothing had ever crashed into it_ ). She holds her breath and looks up and stares into the deep, dark expanse of the night sky and imagines when there had been points of light that for one brilliant moment had lit up all of the sky.

            Then Amy closes her eyes and breathes out, the memory fading from her sight and she’s back in the dim corridor. The Doctor told her instances like that weren’t likely to occur anywhere else, that it was only in the TARDIS they’d happen since they weren’t strictly in the linear flow of time here.

 

 

 

            Amelia Jessica Pond remembers _everything_.


End file.
